Stuff You Should Know - How Drag Queens Work

Episode Date: June 11, 2013

You can trace the origin of men dressing as women in public back to classic Greek theater, but modern drag queens owe their real inception to vaudeville. Dip your toe into the politics and culture of this unique phenomenon with Josh and Chuck. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and do not include pending transactions or any other purchases you make before the end of the billing period. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know. Chuck. Sashay.

Chantay. Just a couple of drag queens hanging out. Talking shop. We should say Chuck and I are both in full drag right now. That's right. You did a nice job with the hair, the wig I like. Thank you. You find it big, is it?

No, you can't get too big if you're a drag queen. I'm a little more fishy than glamour. The lashes are nice. And I notice keeping with the tradition set by Julian Eltinges. Your hands are quite feminine. Oh, well, I'm holding them in a very feminine manner. Well done. Thank you.

They're powdered. Just right. The knuckles aren't as hairy as usual. And I like your campy drag. Thank you. I had no idea that your forearms were so big and that you had an anchor tattoo. That's right.

And if you notice my crotch, you won't notice anything. Smooth as a kindle. That's right. It's taped and tucked. You're wearing a gaff. So that's really all you need to know. I went online and looked up how to make a gaff or gaff. I was like, I think I understand what this is,

but I need to find out. And I saw a YouTube tutorial by a drag queen. Sure. How to make one out of like an underwear waistband, like an elastic band and a tube sock cut on either end. So it's open. OK. And you just slide the tube sock or no,

you slide the elastic band through the open tube sock and step into the elastic band, right? Because it makes two holes that way. Sure. For your legs. And then I guess it's everything gets real compressed. Gotcha. Yeah.

Well, that's great. I use duct tape. It's a little more uncomfortable. I'm going to use your method for that video. Yeah, it looked like it looked cheap, easy, quick, and as comfortable as that kind of thing can be. So people, if you are not one that reads titles to podcasts and you just say, you know, I'm going to hear what's going on.

We're talking about drag queens. And it has an interesting history. And it's an interesting culture. And we like to cover those things. Yeah. So let's do it. Well, this is a Conger article. Yes, Kristen Conger from Stuff Mom Never Told You.

Yeah. And she did a really good job of like kind of tracing the history and like really getting into the culture of drag queens. And it turns out that there is a considered father of drag queens, although he went to great pains to suggest that he wasn't gay. That's because he was totally gay. I think so. Like I noticed she's the, she pointed out that he was a bachelor.

Yeah, I looked up more on that. It was often rumored that he, we're talking about who he mentioned earlier with the hands, Julian Elting. Elting. Elting and born William Dalton. And this is early 20th century and he made a big, big name for himself. Yeah. Dressing like a lady.

Yeah. And performing. In vaudeville, he started out, I guess as a vaudeville performer, but then he, he was in a play called The Fascinating Widow in 1911. Yeah. And apparently the ladies loved him. Of course. Loved his drag because he was just really good at it.

Yeah. And from there, he ended up with, he ended up on screen in films. Sponsorship deals. Yeah. He apparently was the highest salaried performer of his age. It's crazy. There were fan magazines dedicated to him and like dressing up as women. He had zines, multiple zines.

Yeah, at least three. And he performed for King Edward the 7th of the UK who was delighted by his performance. Of course he was. So this guy, Julian Elting, just like making quite a name for himself. And again, he went to great lengths to be like, look at me. I'm a guy. See, I'm smoking cigars and I'm fishing. Yeah.

But like I said, I looked into it more and apparently he would, he would attack people in the audience sometimes when they would yell out derogatory terms about his masculinity. Oh yeah. And he would challenge people to fights and things and he was a lifelong bachelor. So I think that probably meant that he was gay. Right. Which is fine. Because as a cross dresser, you can be gay or straight.

Doesn't matter. Right. You can be transgender. Doesn't matter. Yeah. There are all different stripes of people who like to put on the opposite clothes of whatever their gender is because they're kings as well and perform on stage. It's just, you know, it's fun.

It's a lighthearted fun thing. Right. Well, that's the whole point of it. It's supposed to be lighthearted and fun. Yeah. It wasn't always though. There was a very long period where when men dressed up as women on stage, it was because women weren't allowed to perform on stage.

So men were frequently like doing this straight, very seriously in dramas. In Greece, in ancient Greece, it was considered dangerous for women to be on stage and they were not allowed to be in any of the Greek dramas, which is kind of ironic because the Greek theater arose out of the rites of Dionysus, which were performed almost exclusively by women. And then, but once it was established as theater, the member like, thank you for bringing this to our attention. No, go over there because it's too dangerous here.

Right. Very interesting. Yeah. And in the middle ages, of course, the Christian church chimed in and said, you know what? Here's what theater is. It is Bible stories on stage in church pageants, basically. It's like, oh, you used to like the theater. Well, get a load of this because this is what it is now.

Yeah. And women were not allowed to take part in that. Of course, men would play the parts of women and it wasn't until the 17th century in opera that women finally the stage opened up and they were allowed to tread the boards. Yeah. If in Shakespeare's era, men played both roles and I think what was it, 1660? That one of the kings in England. Charles II.

Yeah. The sequel. He said, you know what? Let's let the ladies back on stage. But even after that, this idea of men dressing up as women still continued on. Yeah. And women are actually dressing as men in what they call breeches roles. Right.

But they were breeches. Yeah, it was pretty straightforward terminology. But King Charles called the bluff of all the performers. He was like, you know what? You don't have to dress as women anymore. We'll just let women on stage and the guys were like, but fine. We really like this. Yeah.

And well, what happened to us, men started to play women in a funnier way and it was more for comedy because they wouldn't try to look super feminine. They would try to look like a big burly man in a dress, which is sort of like in the Monty Python tradition. Like, yeah, although they were. No, they weren't exactly. No, they were not fishy at all. But we'll get to that.

That's actually a thing. Yeah. Fishy drag. Yeah. Well, you might as well tell him. Well, I already mentioned it earlier. I said I'm more fishy than. Yeah.

But I don't think they understand fishy. fishy is going after like the like you want people to confuse you for a woman. Exactly. Like as feminine as like womanly as possible is like dead on right. Yeah. And then campy is obviously more for comedy. You're more masculine looking. And then there's of course the glamour drag, which is huge hair.

Everyone's huge eyelashes and glittery dresses. So back to history though. Interestingly, when the West was loosening restrictions in Japan and the East, they were tightening them and making men once again play the Onagata roles, female impersonators and Kabuki productions. They're like the ladies cannot do Kabuki any longer. Yeah. And that lasted through the 19th century in Japan.

Really? Yeah. Wow. So it's weird. No, it was like, I guess if you're a woman, you could have been in Japan and then when they closed it down in Japan, you could have gone over to England. Yeah. Bam.

I guess so. You're all set. Traveling performer. So in the West, in England in particular, that whole King Charles II bluff that was called, that became eventually the idea that if you were dressing in drag on stage, it was for laughs. Right. You weren't trying to pull off being a woman.

Right. You're trying to just make fun of the juxtaposition of you big burly dude wearing a dress and acting as a woman, but not doing a very good job of it. That gave rise to a type of theater called pantomime and it is the shortened term of it is Panto. And I guess mime is the other half what came out of this. Yeah. But Panto theater is like a big burly dudes in drag playing the women and then a woman

playing like a young male who's now being inducted into the world of sex. Right. And the adults, you know, and I think the first Panto play was from 1723, right? Yeah, it started out there and then spread over to the United States in the form of, you know, before movie theaters and things like that. America's favorite entertainment was when the vaudeville show came through. Sometimes that was your only entertainment. That are like shooting at things in your yard.

So it was their favorite and also their most hated form of entertainment because that was it. Yeah. So the vaudeville act would roll through town and there would, you know, there'd be all kinds of theater and weird performances and jugglers and ventriloquists and acrobats and things like that, banjos and then actually drag performances to the delight of families and children. And it was all seen as just good fun.

There was no link to homosexuality at the time at the at the least America wasn't putting its hangups about homosexuality on to drag performances. Yeah. Well, then that really came about at the turn of the century. That's when people got a little more like, Hey, what's going on here? As gay people came out of the closet a little bit more and into the forefront a little bit more and we mean in very small steps, obviously back then. Yeah.

People like, well, wait a minute, one of these guys dressing up like ladies all of a sudden. Right. Right. It was just fun or is this like wrong? Right. You like this, don't you? Right. And because of prohibition, people needed their little speakeasies or little secret places to go drink.

It also birthed secret places for gay dudes to go hang out. Yeah. So we created the first gay bars initially. Right. Which ultimately in turn about 40 years later started to give rise to the first discos. Remember that? Oh, yeah. They grew out of gay bars.

That's right. And there was New York, Chicago, big towns, probably Kansas City at the time. Sure. San Francisco. Went through what was called a pansy craze. Yeah. Not our term. No.

And where basically it became like the era of the gay man coming out of the closet. Like there are lots of bars to go to. There are lots of nightclubs. There was like the first gay culture in the United States really started to come about. Yeah. And I remember I read somewhere that cocaine used to be a gay drug. Oh, really? Yeah.

They called it, I'm sorry to say this. They used to call cocaine fairy dust. Oh, yeah. Because it was so favored by gay guys around this time. Because I guess you could get it legally. When was this in like the 50s or 40s and 30s? No, no, no. Like the 20s, the 20s, maybe the 30s.

Gotcha. Yeah. Interesting. So by the 1950s, this is when there were actual laws against being gay and laws against dressing as a woman. And in fact, in New York City, which you would think would be super forward thinking, in the 1950s, they had a cross-dressing law or I guess anti-cross-dressing law that said that you as a man were legally bound to wear no fewer than three pieces of male clothing

in order to not be arrested for being in drag. Right. And this is a problem for these gay bars because they frequently had drag shows. Sure. So I guess I was thinking like you just maybe do like a full on full circle cross-dress where you dress as a woman dressing as a man as a woman. Victor Victoria. He just blew my mind.

That was Victor Victoria. That was the movie with Julie Andrews. It was a woman impersonating a man impersonating a woman. I thought that was Bert Reynolds. It was Julie Andrews. She did a really good job. You're thinking of deliverance. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that went way different than Victor Victoria. So by the time the 1960s, mid-60s rolled around, there's a, a Congressites, a book called Mother Camp where they estimated about 500 regularly performing drag queens by the, by 1966. Yeah. It's a pretty, pretty high number for back then. Yeah.

I would imagine up, although I'm sure it's quite a lot more than that now, but we're talking the 60s and this is a time when if you were at a gay bar, just being dressed in drag, yeah, like there was a pretty high likelihood the cops are going to come busting down the door and take you to jail and probably beat you up for being gay. Yeah. So yeah, 500 performing out in the open is, I would imagine that's a pretty good number. But at the time there were newer performers that like El Tange wanted this, this one guy Bailey, Jim Bailey, who apparently did a spot on Judy Garland.

And he was very adamant about saying, no, I'm not a cross dresser. I'm not a drag queen. I am a female impersonator. And he, you know, had a long run in the business as such, but it was, it was a big distinction for him. Yeah. And he wanted to be called an illusionist and that makes the point that I think he said earlier, not everyone who does drag is gay and not everyone who does drag cross

dresses in their offstage life. Yeah. But for the most part, if you're going to put money on whether or not a drag queen is as gay, you can probably bet that they probably are under normal circumstances. Yeah. I don't think we even mentioned the drag queen where that came from the term. Oh, no, we didn't. That would have been good in the intro.

It would have been. Let's just do it here. Well, when we were talking about theater, it would have been a good one. The war on drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds a mile a hour.

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Listen to how to money on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So the term drag was the original parlance for men dressing in women's clothing and I didn't see. It's a theater term. Yeah, theater term. That came from though.

I don't either. Okay. And then queen, of course, is a slur for an effeminate gay man. Sure. So drag queen. Put together. You just got the term drag queen. That's right.

So it's underground. Oh, and also we should say transvestite, transsexual, not really favorite terms in the gay community, especially these days because it, you know, up until not that long ago in the DSM. And possibly still listed in the DSM, those are mental disorders. People who do that are mentally ill according to psychology, which is fairly ridiculous. We should encourage people to go listen to our, what do we call that one? Gender reassignment. Gender reassignment.

That was a good one. That was a really good one. So in the 1960s, things start coming out. People start coming out. Drag queens start becoming more visible. And then of course, in 1969, I know we've promised this podcast, we'll do it at some point, the famous Stonewall riots took place wherein June 28th, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, which was run by the mafia at the time.

It was New York's only gay bar run by the mafia. Yeah. Interesting. And they fought back and there was a six day basically riot fight going on between cops and these gay guys. Yeah. You know what? We may dress like ladies, but we fight like dudes.

That's right. We're not going to take it. Yeah. And so I'm pretty much from there. The gay rights movement in the US was born and not even pretty much like, yeah, it happened right there. But Conker kind of describes the scene that it was a six day skirmish with high heel wearing drag queens, but you can imagine that that probably was quite a scene.

Oh yeah. Quite a tableau. Yeah. They should do a movie about that. They did. Yeah. I can't remember what it's called. It's a documentary.

Oh, documentary. Yeah. I'm sure there's a bunch, but there's one before Stonewall or after Stonewall. Maybe just Stonewall. During Stonewall. Yeah. Perry Stonewall. So in the mid 1960s, when all this is blossoming, a guy named Jose Julio Saria in San Francisco,

he was Harvey Milk was not the first openly gay political candidate in San Francisco. No. It was actually Saria. And he founded something called the Imperial Court System, and it was basically a drag community organization to help people out and throw drag balls. And you know, now is philanthropic with HIV and AIDS organizations. Yeah. So they're still around.

Oh yeah. They're bigger than ever. Chapters all over the place. All over the place. Different countries. Canada, Mexico. And the Imperial Court System was a really big step. This was in the mid-60s, I think it was before Stonewall, right?

Yeah, I think so. And this is in the face of like crackdowns, getting arrested, getting beat up, really being mistreated and not having any civil rights. This guy forms the Imperial Court System, and it's like one of the first big steps at unifying not just the drag community but the gay community and really kind of provided this basis or this template for integration and support among gays around the country. And I guess a way to say, hey, there's a lot of other people over here that feel the same way you do and think the same way you do, and it's not just here in San Francisco,

it's not just here in New York. They're all over the place. And this was one of the first cohesions of that mentality, which is a big, big deal. Yeah, it was. But the drag balls that they initiated and started became very popular within the African American drag community. And these days, Conger described it as like a fraternity system, where if you're an up-and-comer and you're a drag queen, you can get sort of like a sponsor, a mother or a father, to

help you out, show you the ropes. Maybe if you were kicked out of your house by your parents because you're not accepted or out of your hometown, they'll put you up and find you a place to live. You know who else does that? Who? Cindy Lauper. Does she really? Yeah, she I think founded and definitely funds like some sort of rescue system.

Like a halfway house? Yeah, for teens who are kicked out for being gay. Nice. Isn't that? Yeah, she's awesome. She is. I think I told you I went to her Halloween party when you're in New York. You did not tell me that.

Yeah, my friend is a huge fan and like on the inside as far as fandom, you know, like she knows who he is and he got an invitation to her Halloween party at her loft in New York and I went and it was awesome. I met her and got a picture made and that is cool. She was as sweet as she could be. Yeah, yeah. She seems like she's like living the personality. Yeah.

And boy, what a party man. I can imagine. Yeah, you mean I went and saw her a couple of years ago and Dr. John opened for her. So we were there for, you know, the Dr. John show too and when Dr. John ended, like everyone got up and left and then new people came in and sat down for the Cindy Lauper show. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was a weird mix, but that didn't end up mixing. That's like, uh, it was cool to see both of them, uh, like Zach Brown opening for Dolly

Parton. Yeah, something like that. Maybe even maybe even weird like they're both country, quote unquote, right there. So if you're interested in seeing more about the, um, African-American drag balls, there's a great documentary, uh, called Paris is Burning. Have you seen it? Huh? Yeah.

I've not seen it. Super entertaining. Cool. Really good. Uh, we mentioned drag kings earlier. That is a thing women can also dress as men. Yeah. Which was not a stretch.

Once drag queens were established, a guy named Johnny science about 1989 said, what about drag kings? Yeah. And bam, there they are. That's right. So let's talk about what you need to do. What kind of transformation needs to take place? I know we kind of hinted at it earlier with our jokes about tucking and plucking, but

jokes. That's where it starts. And we remarked about your hands, um, Julian Elting was, um, you think, you know, all the work goes on the face, but he said the most important thing is the hands. Well, that was the one that he worried about the most. Sure. Well, you remember that Seinfeld manhands? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that makes, I can imagine it's very distracting if you have a couple of chunks of ham, you know, and you're acting very effeminate or whatever. That's weird. Yeah. They went so over the top in that episode because like, I'm sure it was like the key grip or something. Yeah.

Breaking the bread. Yeah. That was great. Like disintegrating. Got something in your face. Yeah. That was so good. Um, so, uh, all right.

So what do you do? You got to get the hands powdered and he said there's certain ways of holding them to make them appear to be more dainty. Well, he did. I'm not sure that he was particularly obsessed about this, but he would spend like an hour and a half just working on the hands. That's just the hands. So you can, you can guess how long it takes to like do makeup because not only are you

doing makeup, you have to do it right, but you have to do it to cover up the fact that you're a man. Sure. So you have to like cover up the fact that you're a man and then do the makeup as a woman, I imagine. Yeah. And I think things really picked up in the seventies with this as far as really going on all out after, um, a San Francisco, uh, drag show, uh, collective called the cockets.

Apparently they put on a not so great show and Gourvy Dahl himself said famously in his review, no talent is not enough. Yeah. So he's like, great, you're drag queens, but this is awful. Yeah. Basically you still got to like give the audience something. Well, they were also not necessarily like real drag queens. They were a bunch of hippies on acid.

Oh, sure. They basically did their own pretty much improv musical that sucked. Yeah. But the fact that they were doing it in drag made real, the real drag community, and I'm maybe wrong, but I have the impression they weren't like representative of the real drag you say. Yeah, you're probably right. Whoa.

This king, like people are paying attention and people want like a good show. Yeah. So let's give it to them. Yeah. Give them some talent. Yeah. And that, so that show that cockets show was like kind of a turning point as far as like, let's do this right.

If you're going to dress up like a woman, do it right. Yeah. And if you've ever been to a drag show, I've seen them before you. I've been to a few and I've been to some ones that were great and I've been to some ones that sucked and it's like any other theatrical experience. It's like, it makes a huge difference. If it's bad, it's real bad. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's the same as like, it's the same like watching improv or whatever. Yeah. Like if you see people who are really good at improv and then you see people who are just trying improv, yeah, you can't even put them the same way. It's like, it's like Dolly Parton, Zach Brown. All right. So in order to kick it up a notch, they had to start taking more care with their appearance

and the first step, if you're interested in giving this a shot and your dude is to shave. That's a pretty good first step. If you're going fishy or glamour, yeah, yeah, real close shave as close as you can get. If you're doing camping, you might not necessarily have to shave. Yeah. I think I could get up there with my beard and be thoroughly disgusting as a woman. Just kind of hump the air without moving your arms. The next thing you need to do is you need to apply lots and lots of makeup in a traditionally,

a tradition called beating your face or beating your mug. Yeah. And that's what they call it in the drag community. It's really like a lot of cosmetics. You want to hide heavy jawlines and stuff like that and just slather it on basically. The more the better, depending on what you're going for, of course. Well, yeah. I mean, if you're going real feminine, you've got to be careful.

Sure. You can't just take it on. You have to take some skill, I would think. That's right. And then the tuck. Yeah, the tuck. We talked about the gaff. You can also use tape.

I guess you could also tuck if you're just going to walk like a penguin or whatever all night. Or like Buffalo Bill. Right. Yeah. Or I think a scary movie, too, when one of the Wayne's brothers is like, there's a shot of like the waist up. He's like, he has his arms out like he's showing off his shirt.

He's like, what do you guys think? Tucked or untucked? And then they pan out. He's tucked it. He has his legs pressed together, but it's like untucked. I didn't see those movies. That sounds funny, though. Oh, those were surprisingly funny movies.

Oh, really? Yeah. I like the spoof movie. I love them after airplane and the Naked Gun movies. I didn't really see a whole lot of them after that. They're good. At least the first four. So after you've done your tucking and your taping and you're all fit tight down there,

you might want to add some breasts. It's probably a pretty good idea. You can add silicone. All those, they can be expensive. And I'm not talking about implants. I'm talking about a silicone implant that you would like put in a brassiere. Right, or there's ones that adhere to your body and your body temperature adheres them to your body.

And they're like, well, that's what this article says. I don't know. It's not like I'm in the fake breasts. I didn't notice that part. That sounds gross. Yeah. She's saying Congress says that these things are a couple of hundred dollars for the really good ones that are really realistic.

So I imagine, again, if you're going fishy, it probably just takes a lot more time. Yeah. A lot more effort and a lot more money to be a fishy drag queen. Yeah. I would say so. Yeah. It's a lot easier just to be campy and look funny. Sure.

And then, of course, the name is a big, big part of the culture. Generally the names are sort of like Bart Simpson's prank calls, you know, like... Amanda Huggin Kiss? Yeah, exactly. Most of the names are like that. Heather Lettuce? Yeah. Heather Lettuce.

I looked up some of my favorites. Okay. Madame Overy. That's a good one. Jean Pool. Uh-huh. And obviously a lot of times, too, it's toying with the fact of the gender and stuff like that.

Yeah. Wilma Balzdrop. Good Lord. Tess Tosteron. And then a nice clean one for everyone out there, Della Catesen. That's nice. Those are just a few of the funny ones. Looks like a throwback to the vaudeville and drag shows were family-friendly.

That's right. Good, clean, fun. Yeah, still good, clean, fun. Della Catesen. Yeah. Heather Lettuce. Wilma Balzdrop. But the name is a big part of it, you know.

Coming up with a great name can really, like, that just kicks it off right because when you're announced, if it's a great name, the audience is tickled from the very beginning. If it's a bad name, they're like, yeah, what's this going to be? Right. Yeah. So what are you doing this for, Chuck? Well, there's all different kinds of things. A regular drag performance that I've been to is either lip-syncing or actually performing

like karaoke style on stage, one after another, there's usually an MC in drag handling the whole show. Right. And it's basically like just, you know, stage performance singing. But they can also like get real gigs, like hosting. Or being, I guess, kind of a party promoter, just kind of circulating around a party, like keeping everything light. What's more fun than hiring a drag queen to come to your party and just kind of lighting

things up? I think that's a great idea. You know? Yeah. As Ru Paul said, the whole point is to not take life too seriously. Exactly. So when you have somebody dressed as a woman, not taking life too seriously, your guests are probably going to lighten up a little bit too.

If you have, like, somebody wandering around saying, I'm head of lettuce, right? You know? Yeah, yeah. And then we can't not mention Australia because for some reason, even though Australia is the center of masculinity on the planet, it's rife with drag queens. Thanks to a particular movie. Is it because of that or was that already a thing and they just highlighted that? I wonder.

I took it that it was the, that the movie was its own thing and just created this huge cult following that has basically put Australia on the map. That's how I took it. The rest of the movie was The Silic Queen of the Desert, of course, is the movie. Yeah. Which you've seen, right? Yeah. Yeah.

It's a good movie. Yeah. Very good movie. And I can't, I've seen parts of like two Wong Foo. Thanks for everything. Yeah. I never saw that one. Something about Swayze.

I just couldn't get over it. Swayze, Wesley Snipes. Yeah. Like Guy Pearce. Perfect. Swayze. Holy cow. Guy Pearce was one of the ones in The Silic Queen of the Desert.

I didn't know that. Was anybody else that is a star now? Well, yeah. It was definitely Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving from The Matrix. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Mr. Anderson. Yeah.

Or actually, he was a Mr. Anderson. He was whatever his name was. And then Terence Stamp, of course, a legendary Terence Stamp, and it was The Adventures of The Silic Queen of the Desert. Yeah. So if you're looking for it on Netflix or whatever, you should watch it. It's a fun movie. Yeah.

And Terence Stamp and Drag. I was like, that's something else. He's the limey, you know? Right. So ultimately, what you're trying to do is get a job in a movie about drag queens. Or to become RuPaul. That's true. And they have apparently a show last year, an Australia reality show, where drag queens

are taking that same journey that they did in the movie. Right. And it's on TV now. Right. Apparently, though, there's not a lot of money that you do it for the love, for the adoration. Yeah, of course. There was a study of drag queens down in Key West, which is like drag queen central. Uh-huh.

If you've ever watched CNN's New Year's Eve broadcast. I have not. Yeah. It's like all drag queens down there. It's crazy. Oh, yeah? Yeah. So drag queen in a giant high heel, I think, is what they do really instead of like the

Yeah. The star or the ball or whatever. Yeah. But they did a study of drag queens down in Key West and they average about 200 bucks a week. So they're doing it for the love, people. Tip them. Yeah.

And I think probably every drag queen out there spends way more money than they're making. Yeah. You know, hosting and doing gigs like that. So we mentioned RuPaul. Yeah. We did not mention Mae West. No.

Well, she apparently took a, uh, she based her character or her persona on a drag queen named Bert Savoy, okay, born Everett McKenzie. So that's weird. He was a drag queen, but he changed his name to another male name. Huh. Anyway, um, he had a very familiar catchphrase. You must come over and she took that and turned it into come up some time and see me. Yeah.

People out there are going, no, Josh, just noted it's why don't you come up and see me sometime? Yeah, you're wrong. Yeah. That's a misquote. Yeah. And similarly, Clint Eastwood based his throaty voice on Marilyn Monroe. Shut up.

Swear to God. What do you mean? His throaty voice. He based it on her. He didn't really talk like that. He, that's, he, he's like, hi, I'm Clint Eastwood. He talked like the generic teenage cashier from the Simpsons. Wow.

No. He said, as far as Uncle John's bathroom reader, that he based his voice on Marilyn Monroe. Yeah. That he said that crazy. Yeah. All right. Should we mention a few of these famous drag queens?

Yes. Danny LaRue. And if you're in England and you're not into Eddie Isard, then Danny LaRue is probably your guy, or at least until 2009 when he sadly passed away. Yeah. But he was big back in the day and like the 50s, 60s, 70s. Yeah. Yeah.

Earned a lot of money. Doris Fish. Yeah. Another Australian who moved to San Francisco and wrote and starred in the film Vegas in Space. Have you seen that? No. Have you?

No. Cult film, apparently. Yeah. Not about cults. It's just like, has a cult following. Yeah. And sadly, he died of AIDS in 1991. Mm-hmm.

Divine, of course, anyone who's a John Waters fan, or should we say a Harris Milstead fan? I didn't know that wasn't his real name. Harris Glenn Milstead. I didn't either. Divine was John Waters, one of his favorite people to put in his films, and did some kind of gross things in earlier movies like Pink Flamingos. What did she do with Dog Poop?

I ate it, I believe. God, that's gross. I'm not mistaken. But Divine, of course, made her biggest role in Hairspray as Edna Turnblad, and that's who Chandra Volta played in the musical version. I didn't know that. Did you ever see it? No.

I didn't. Is it really? It's pretty bad. Where'd you see it? It's a movie, you know. Oh. Yeah, they did Hairspray on Broadway, and then they turned the Broadway show into a musical. Right.

And I thought... To Volta starred in the movie version of the musical. Okay, but wait, where did Divine star in the movie, right? Hairspray. The original Hairspray before it was a Broadway musical. So they did a movie, turned it into a musical, and then turned the musical into a movie? Yes. That is mind-bending.

It is very much. Is Dame Edna? Not a fan. Oh, no. No, are you? Yeah. I thought she was pleasant. Yeah, I'm not a big fan, but that is definitely one of the more famous, and I think...

Who played him? Barry Humphries, another Australian. Yeah, but wasn't he also keen to say, like, I'm not a drag queen? Yeah, she was a character that he played, and he didn't consider it like drag. Right. And she's retired. Woof. All right, I just showed Josh a picture of Travolta in that movie.

She's a... I didn't stop that. Yeah. She's retired as of 2012. There's... Dame Edna has moved off to Florida, I guess. All right. Anyone else?

Lady Bunny. Who's Lady Bunny? Lady Bunny is Jill of All Trades Congress as a multi-talented comedian, DJ, and actress. She founded Wigstock. Oh, I've heard of Wigstock. See, here's a picture of Lady Bunny. She's got a huge wig, which is awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No Wigstock. That's fun. And Wigstock is no longer either. That ran for about a decade, or I'm sorry, two decades, 85 to 2005. Yeah. Right on the nose. So that's drag queens. Yep.

Go see a drag show if you've never done it. If you're visiting New York in a big city, you've never been, and you're from, oh, I don't know, Kansas. You don't even know you've gone to New York, man. Like... Sure. The drag show I went to is in Savannah. That's a huge drag town.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? If you're visiting the big city for the first time, go check out a drag show. Be open-minded. Yeah. Have some fun. Have a drink. And it's a good time.

Yeah. I mean, that's why we didn't really describe them much, because you kind of got to see them for yourself. Well, and you never know what you're going to get. Yeah. It could be terrible, or it could be great. Exactly. Yeah.

If you want to learn more about drag queens, you can type those words into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, and since I said drag queens, that means it's time for message break. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that, and I'm the prime example of that.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid drugs. But be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement.

Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals, our podcast, How to Money can help. That's right, we're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now and we want to see you achieve your money goals. And it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts and focusing

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Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Now it's time for Listener Mail. Good, because we're actually going to give advice to this kid. Okay. This should be good. Good advice, sir.

I don't know. We'll see. I think we should just wing it. Hey guys, Jerry. First off, I'm a huge fan and I'm about to graduate after five long years at the University of Washington in Seattle. Go Huskers. Huskies.

Instead of getting a degree in something practical that would set me up for a great job like business or engineering, I follow my interests, which I think is great by the way. And I will be getting a BA in Spanish and a BS in astronomy and physics. Awesome. That being said, guys, I'm about to graduate in five weeks and I really have nothing lined up for when I enter the, quote, real world. Can you send me some money? I know I want to go back to school eventually for something involving education, but I was

curious if you have any suggestions or advice of what I should do in the meantime. I'm a little stressed about it, to be honest, so I thought I would turn to the duo that never leads me astray. This is Owen and he says, it's pronounced something like capis. I'm going to say Owen capis, but his spell is he's got a lot of consonants in it. Let me see. Jeez. Yeah.

So that's capis, apparently. Okay. So Owen, advice. Of course, the first thing I'm going to say is travel and probably Josh too because it's always good after you finish college to get out there and see a little bit of the world because it might inform your decisions in life. It might open you up to something you might want to do. I have some job advice.

I would say just like college, follow your passions. So if you find, if you think about it like, wow, I really, really am hardcore into Spanish. Figure out something to use that, some way to use that. Or astronomy. It's a pretty narrow use of that, but you never know. I think if you, there could be a company out there that loves employing astronomers, which has them sit around all day talking about astronomy. If he's into education eventually, you could go get a job at a science center and work

with a big telescope and a planetarium and delight in entertaining school children. But if you're studying Spain, dude, and you have some time, Spanish, I would say go to Spain, get a ticket, go to Spain, check things out. Tap on love. Might decide on a job. You might just eat some good paella and have a good time and go home and be broke. I say get a job, hippie, but make sure it's a job you love. Yeah.

I mean, that's the point to me. It's like, that's what we both did. We figured out what we loved and we hard laid them into jobs, you know? Yeah. Later in life as well. So kids, you don't have to, you don't have to have it all locked down right after graduation. Yeah. And also, Owen, one thing that I've learned is that you don't, you almost never use the

actual degree that you majored in, like it's almost never applied to the actual job you get. I don't know. I'll think about this. I'm an English major. Right. I was a history major. That has nothing to do with my job.

Dude, are you kidding me? Anthropology. We do history all the time. Right. But we're hired as writers, right? Yeah. Okay. I see your point.

I can't remember who was the NBC chief that Seinfeld used to, like, Maki actually became like a character when they were trying to sell the TV. Yeah, I can't remember. He fell in love with Elaine. Uh-huh. That's a real guy. And he actually was, like, the head of NBC for a while. Yeah.

In, like, NBC's heyday. He did a beautiful job of, like, picking shows and sticking with them and steering them. And that was when NBC was dominating. He had a degree in psychology that had nothing to do with it. Yeah, but don't you think psychology helped him with dealing with, you know, high-powered people and... No.

I'll tell you what did it. He was doing what he loved and, hence, what he was good at. And if you do that, you will always succeed. Yeah. Well, you know what? Unless you're a philosophy major. You sold me. Good.

All right, so that was from Owen. Thanks for that. You're awesome. Let us know what you do. Like, follow up. I'd like to know. Yeah. If you go to Spain, I'd like to hear about it.

Or if you get a job, I want to hear about it. All right. How old is he? Five years. So he's probably, like, 23. Yeah, probably somewhere in there. Whatever you do, Owen. Good luck.

But he's, like, 47. He didn't fail to mention that. We've got a late start. I worked in a factory for 20 years. Should I go travel to Spain? Yes. If you want some advice from me and Chuck, man, this can open a floodgate, I think, Chuck. Sure.

You can tweet short questions to us at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com. You can send us an e-mail to stuffpodcastediscovery.com. And you can always go check out our website for answers. It has all of them at stuffyshadown.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. This podcast is brought to you by BASF, the chemical company. That's what you call civil answer for.

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